1. Field of the Invention
This invention concerns authorizing distribution of a telephone recording, and more particularly concerns automatically associating a key with the recording that authorizes transferring the recording.
2. Related Art
In recent years there has been tremendous growth in telecommunications technology. Even though cell phone high-speed data services are only just beginning, there are reportedly already 130 million cell phones in use in the United States as of mid-2002. The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, a trade group, reports that in the year 2002 billable cell phone calling will exceed half a trillion minutes. Due to the nature of their use, it is particularly useful to include in cell phones a message recording functionality. Another message recording telecommunications technology, voicemail, predates the mass proliferation of cell phones, but the use of voicemail continues to rapidly increase. Despite the spread of cell phones and voicemail, there has not been a correspondingly great increase in user aids for managing these two telecommunications technologies. Consequently, a need exists for improving that management, and particularly for improving management of integrated cell phone and voicemail use.
The foregoing need is addressed in the present invention. According to a method form of the invention, a method for authorizing distribution of a telephone recording includes announcing for a first message-recording apparatus that a telephone caller can record a message. The message is recorded by the first message-recording apparatus, and a key is automatically associated with the message. The key authorizes transferring the message to a second message-recording apparatus.